Tell It To The Dinosaurs

October 13, 1985

Ever since humans first discovered evidence of the extinction of the dinosaurs, it has remained a fascinating mystery. A mighty and dominant species once inhabited this earth and then quite suddenly vanished. What happened? Could it happen again? These questions go deeper than scientific curiosity. They touch on mankind`s most abiding fears.

Now a team of chemists from the University of Chicago is reporting findings that indicate a large comet or meteorite slammed into the planet some 65 million years ago, setting off global fires that killed off most forms of life. Again, the significance reaches well beyond the realm of paleontology. If the theory is correct, it may tell us something about the consequences of nuclear war.

The Chicago chemists have found a layer of soot that spread across the planet at about the time of the dinosaurs` extinction. They say the mass destruction of life could be a harbinger of what would happen in a ``nuclear winter,`` with the sun dimmed by the smoke from fires touched off by barrages of nuclear warheads.

Now then, it may seem a little odd that some scientists have become so exercised over the nuclear winter debate. After all, nobody said the apocalypse would be a rose garden.

But you have to give the nuclear winter theorists this much: It is one thing to try to imagine a war that destroys millions of people in the great cities of the Soviet Union and the West; it is another to imagine one that snuffs out all human life. The message seems to be that if the bombs start going off, there will be nowhere, absolutely nowhere to hide.

And perhaps that is what gives this latest bit of evidence in the debate its special force. People can imagine the extinction of the dinosaurs because they learned about it as children. They can get their minds around it in a way that is almost impossible with regard to nuclear war.

So the fate of the dinosaurs is meant as a kind of a metaphor as mankind lumbers along under the weight of its enormous arsenals. And there is not much comfort in reflecting that if the University of Chicago chemists are right, then life on this planet has proven extraordinarily resilient. Like the green shoots that pushed up from the ravaged slopes of Mt. St. Helen`s as the lava cooled, life always seems to come back. Trouble is, that`s not much solace to the dinosaurs.